Index

Gigabyte was the first top-tier vendor releasing a 780G board. The layout is a typical µATX board, providing one PCIe x16 port and two PCI ports. If you are not satisfied with the graphics power you can always add a more powerfull graphics card.

The VRM is a four-phase analog design, which could handle a Phenom X4 9750, but not Phenom X4 9850. This is quite strange, because the list shows 125W TDP for the 9750. We know there are two flavors of this CPU, one with 95W TDP and one with 125W TDP. Our guess is that there is a critical error in the support list and you should avoid any CPU with 125W TDP.

Gigabyte is using the full µATX size, so you can mount the board in your case properly. Quite annoying are the audio-connectors behind the Northbridge. The cooler gets quite hot, so there is a chance it will melt down your audio cables if you dare to put it over the Northbridge cooler. Four USB 2.0 headers gives you additional eight ports, but Gigabyte doesn't provide any USB brackets.

Network connectivity is provided by a Realtek RTL8111C PCIe chipset, audio is a custom-made Realtek ALC889A, which is actually an ALC885 with 7.1 output. Of course, the 780G includes an additional 5.1 audio codec for HD content. This board also provides Firewire 400, which may come in handy.

On the rear side you will find all connectors you may have use for. Please note that you can use either DVI or HDMI with all 780G boards. This board provides only four USB 2.0 ports, but gives you an eSATA II port. The fifth and sixth SATA port (eSATA) will only work when AHCI is enabled, otherwise you are stuck with four IDE compatible SATA ports. One Firewire port, 7.1 analog audio and an optical audio-out completes the back-panel.